Hey, did you know we are in the midst of the Fair Trade Fortnight? It’s true. Why would I lie about that? They’ve got “Big Swap” events happening all over Australia and New Zealand, plus other events you can find on our calendar, which I’ve been told will have veg-friendly food. Sweet!

It’s a pretty exciting time of year for vegans. What else could I be talking about, but the start of avocado season! Did you know you can join an Avo Club? Go join it! And then go make me this green tea noodle with avocado sauce recipe! Om nom nom…

Please vote “Yes” in this poll on banning jump-racing, spurred by another tragic case of a horse needing to be put down. Seriously, who are these a**holes voting “No.” I’m going to throw a saddle on their children and ride them around until their limbs break! Even The 7PM Project brought some coverage to it this week – weigh in in their forums.

The Sydney Morning Herald has an interesting article on the chef at veg-friendly Japanese restaurant Wafu in Surry Hills, who apparently runs a pretty tight “clean plates club.” Anyone experienced her wrath? I went once and the food was great, so I had no troubles. Brown rice sushi is awesome!

What’s the deal with Perth getting all these awesome events lately? Is there a vegan revolution happening there? This Environmental and Animal Issues Forum sounds like something I’d be all up on. What do people from Perth call themselves? Perthians? Perth-people? Perthlings??? Perthlings: who wants to go to this and report on it here?

Canberra’s getting in on the awesome event action with the RSPCA-sponsored Million Paws Walk on May 16! Bring your furry friend! Or they invite the dogless to show up to gawk at other people’s dogs. So you don’t have to sit in the park on dog meet-up days and watch jealously and creepily from a bench… uh, not that I’ve ever done that the first Sunday of every month or anything.

It is getting cold!! Do you need some cute new winter gloves? Cate from Aduki Press made these and they’re adorbs!

Bundle up, make yourself some awesome vegan soup, and enjoy a great weekend, everyone!

A reader named Kate Broad from Queensland sent me a story yesterday that I couldn’t help but tear up at. She’s given me permission to re-post it here in the hopes that it might prevent anyone who reads this from suffering the same heartbreak. Here is her story…

My puppy Kerby was a 4 month old Maltese/Jack Russell/ Gawd-knows-what and was at a shelter in Toowoomba when we found him online.

Kerby and his 5 brothers were put in a bag as 8 week old pups and thrown from a car window onto the Warrego Highway. All survived and were re-homed successfully.

Kerby soon became best of friends with my other shelter dog, Fearless and the two were inseparable for the two short months we had him in our lives.

Last Thursday I came home from work to find only Fearless greeting me outside. This was very unusual.

I frantically began my search for Kerby and soon realised something was very wrong. One place I felt I should look was the pool. Kerby hated the pool, would not go near it and the last time we checked he could no longer fit through the barred fence as he had grown too big in the front shoulders. We had recently put the cover on the pool and it looked normal as always- undisturbed. Because I could not find him anywhere else in the yard I thought it only made sense to look.

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In Australian pounds 250,000 unwanted cats and dogs are euthanised each year.

Death Row Pets is an organisation that wants the killing of companion animals to end. The main issue is that people impulse buy companion animals from pet shops that have received the animals from puppy mills and backyard breeders who are breeding to excess without any regard for animal welfare.

Having worked at a vet clinic for 10 years I have seen too many cases of people deciding their pet isn’t right for them after a year or even after a few months. People who impulse purchase don’t consider the costs of caring for an animal. They complain about the costs of food or medical care forgetting they had no problem spending $2000 to purchase their purebred or faux-purebred eg. moodles, cavoodles or any other popular cross breed. Often purebreds suffer from hereditary diseases, disorders and behavioural problems that have been caused by inbreeding. Breeders know this but continue to breed from their dogs.

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